This invention relates to a wall stud assembly and more particularly to a wall stud assembly for a portable/in-plant building.
The buildings of the type to which the wall stud assembly of this invention relates are prefabricated and ready for assembly at the building site. Such buildings include in-plant offices, guard houses, food service buildings, control rooms, toll booths, parking lot booths, noise control buildings, clean rooms, and the like. Such buildings are formed from load-bearing wall structures as opposed to mere partitions. These portable buildings must be of quality construction, strong and durable. They should be energy efficient, have good sound control and low maintenance. Other characteristics of such buildings are that they must be relatively easy to assemble at the job site and easily disassembled for moving to a different location if desired. They should also be economical.
Such building structures are well-known in the art as are wall studs for use with such building structures. Typically, such wall studs are of steel or extruded aluminum and have side recesses for receiving the side edges of wall panels to form the walls of the building.
One such prior art wall stud has first and second stud members, each of which is generally U-shaped in cross-section with a base and opposing sides forming an open side and a base side of each stud member. Each of such stud members has laterally extending flanges extending outwardly from the side walls at the open side. The base sides of the stud members are affixed in surface engagement with the open sides of the stud members facing outwardly, therefore to sandwich a wall panel between the outwardly extending flanges of the stud members. The base sides are affixed to each other by means of anchoring screws which extend through the base sides of the stud members. Thus, the fasteners or screws are oriented along a single longitudinal line.
Such assemblies suffer certain drawbacks, however. Fur example, such assemblies are not as strong as desired. Thus, in order to withstand typical loads, the stud assemblies are generally limited to twelve feet in height. Moreover, such assemblies are adapted to walls of limited thickness, generally about 3 inches thick, while in certain situations thicker walls (such as 4 to 5 inches thick) are desired for temperature or sound insulation, ventilation passageways or other reasons. Although the width of the sides of the U-shaped stud members may be increased thereby to deepen the U-shaped cross-sectional to accommodate thicker walls, it has been found that retooling costs to effect such changes increases the cost of the stud assembly significantly. In addition, it does not adequately address the desire for stronger stud assemblies.